


Valse Sentimentale

by seaweedredandbrown



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Asexual Character, But mostly fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Music, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Queerplatonic Relationships, the author has a lot of feelings about a dead gay russian composer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14600358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedredandbrown/pseuds/seaweedredandbrown
Summary: Two times Hermann and Newt heard the other play, and one when they played together.





	Valse Sentimentale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [businesscasual_pseudopod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/businesscasual_pseudopod/gifts).



Hermann was not loitering. ‘Loitering’ implied a lack of purpose, which Hermann found in all things. ‘Lurking’ would not do either. Hermann Gottlieb was a proper Englishman—despite his German origins—and Englishmen did not lurk. Respectable scientists the likes of him merely went about their business here and there. And it so happened that Hermann’s business was bringing him near the laboratory that night, well after his usual working hours.

The Shatterdome rarely slept, but that evening the halls were very quiet. There was a heaviness in the windowless corridors; the night-time lighting bathed everything in a soft, green-grey-blue glow. For a long time, the only sound audible above the murmur of the air conditioning was the soft tapping of Hermann's cane as it echoed his footsteps.

He only heard it when he was almost past the door, which Dr Geiszler, Dr Newton ‘What do you mean rules are rules and not guidelines?’ Geiszler, always forgot to close, damn that man. 

At first Hermann wasn’t sure he had heard anything, or that it was coming from the lab at all. Another two steps; he stopped and listened carefully. Yes, there it was… He was hearing music. Piano. A particularly personal rendition of Rhapsody in Blue: one with no regard for the actual score, the tell-tale sign of one of Dr Newton Geiszler’s musical performances. Brilliant, but oh so wrong, so very wrong, in all the ways that eventually made it so very right. Infuriatingly right, incandescently right, overwhelmingly _right_.

Hermann paused and listened for a while as the notes slipped from the doorway into the quiet of the hallways. Idly, he wondered why he’d never heard Newton—Dr Newton ‘I must be paid attention to at all time or I shall cease to exist the very instant I am not’ Geiszler—why he’d never heard him play before. Or rather, why Newton never played when Hermann was around. He had heard him in the past, before their fateful first meeting. He had looked him up online, out of sheer professional, well-meaning and irreproachable curiosity. He had also heard Newton’s music on a handful of occasions, in the mess or during informal gatherings, but each time Newton had not been aware Hermann had been there, or had stopped playing some time later, or some other circumstances which had always left Hermann with the impression that he was not meant to hear whatever he had heard.

Standing in the deserted corridor, eavesdropping on Newton’s piano effusion, Hermann decided none of this was his business. It was for the best if he was not to be exposed to Newton’s musical tastes on the daily, after all. Those and Hermann’s wouldn’t mesh very well. If only music was the sole thing they disagreed on…

Hermann sighed and pushed the door closed as silently as he could before resuming his way home. There was no point in losing precious brain power over such a frivolous matter; tomorrow was his only Newton-free day of the week, and by the Heavens didn’t he have a lot of work to do.

———

Newt didn’t ‘linger’ in the corridors after dark. He liked the idea that he _haunted_ the Shatterdome, like some sort of urban legend, some sort of cryptid people would talk about in the mess late at night while sneaking a beer up the roof to greet the sunlight, in those after-party hours where you’d bare your heart to almost strangers who’d somehow suddenly become your best friends, your pack, your ride-or-die.

Newt didn’t have a ride-or-die. He didn’t have a pack. He didn’t even have a best friend, although he had to admit that he wasn’t as much of a lone wolf as he liked to believe in his most melodramatic moments. He had friends in the Shatterdome, and he had friends on the Internet—though he hadn’t had the opportunity to get online in too long, in way too long. And then he had whatever it was with Hermann, because you couldn’t argue with a guy all day and all night long without having to take a good hard look at yourself and think there might be ‘something’ there. Not that Newt cared, or rather, not that Newt wanted to care. It was already too much to know what he had felt for Hermann once. He was simply too self-aware not to.

He’d had to become self-aware at some point, because you couldn’t go through life with the charms of his personality and the delightful uniqueness of his neurodivergence without people letting you know what they thought of those charms and delightful uniqueness in very explicit terms. Yet there was no way around working with people, interacting with people, existing among people. So you had to go about and learn why exactly they thought you were abrasive when you were just being friendly, why they thought you were a smartass when you were just trying to help, and a thousand other situations which, if you wished to avoid in the future, forced you into self-awareness.

Self-awareness sucked. There were reasons why Newt preferred not to look too closely at himself, after all. He didn’t like knowing exactly why he was sipping at his third lukewarm beer, carrying a pack of the next six, lingering where he knew he wouldn’t run into anyone because sometimes the only way to remain functional most of the time was to be an actual human disaster the rest of it.

And tonight, Actual Emotional Dumpster Fire Slash Human Disaster Newt Geiszler, ‘Only Very Slightly Drunk’ Edition, was lurching his way to the roof. It wasn’t his usual place of drunkening, the roof, because you’d always run into people there, people together, persons, persons of various gender configuration usually trying to be romantic and shit, and if there was something Newt could not and would not stand for in this very moment, it’d be other human beings engaging into bloody mating rituals. (If at least the rituals were literally bloody, it would make them so much more interesting.)

But the stairway had been clear of all lovemakers, and a few steps before he reached the door Newt had started to hear music.

The music wouldn’t be enough to forget why he had felt the urge to drink himself silly. But it was there and it was helping. It was string music, violin, a waltz. Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, his brain helpfully provided, as played by one Dr Hermann Gottlieb.

He knew it was Hermann’s playing before he climbed the last couple of stairs, only to crumple against the doorframe and push the door open as gently as he could, his blurred vision trying to focus on the silhouette outside. He knew Hermann’s music right away, not because it sounded like any of the performances of it he’d heard before—the piece was not even made for a solo violin; what was Hermann thinking anyway?—but because it sounded like someone had listened to every single performance of the piece. Like they had found each of them sorely lacking and, into the gaps they sensed, had poured all the sadness, the loneliness, the bitterness, the terror and the genius they usually kept in very neatly separated boxes. And Hermann Gottlieb was the only man Newt knew to be as sad as he was brilliant; to be as right as he was wrong; to be as insufferable as he was steadfast, determined, and _good_.

Newt sat on the highest stair and drank his warm beer as Hermann serenaded the night, the waltz ebbing and waning, neverending, overflowing. He let the music soothe him, for as long as it lasted—whether it lasted an hour or it lasted a minute, Newt wasn't sure—but it _lasted_ and he might have cried those warm, ugly, silent tears, and he might have bitten his fist, and it might all have felt like dying… But when the last few notes died out, followed by the familiar thud of the cane along with Hermann’s footsteps, Newt had to admit that he was still alive, and so he stumbled up and dizzily lurched his way to his quarters.

Before sleep fully took him, still dressed and with half a bottle of beer splashed across his pillow, Newt thought about how he’d never heard Hermann play the violin before; how the letters barely mentioned it; and how, if Hermann had taken the care to play so late at night, alone on the roof, he probably wasn't meant to hear it, nor was anyone else. Newt found comfort in this thought. He could bear Hermann not playing for anyone, but the idea that Hermann would be playing for someone who wasn’t Newt didn’t sit well with him. 

———

The thing about war was that they celebrated the losses as much, if not more, as they did the victories. It was easier to take a moment to remember the dead than it was to stop and think about how they had made it through that one but had no certainty of surviving the next.

The thing about the commissary was that on bad nights, on loss nights, its staff pretended to look the other way while everyone raided the liquor stash. There was an order to it, starting with the fallen’s J-tech team, always, all the way down (or up, depending who one might ask) to LOCCENT, who had their own stock anyway, and ending with the Research Division, with whom the commissary’s turning of a blind eye was almost customary at this point, regardless of the occasion.

The thing about the Research Division was that it had a complex and tacit system of favours and truces, along with the clear, explicit rules that were meant to govern it. There were exceptions to the usual tension that ran through the lab, that the two scientists maintained between themselves lest they fell prey to despair and apathy: nervous breakdowns, pain flare, parental phone calls… Loss nights.

There was a ritual to it. Newt would bring a bottle or four from the commissary, the strong stuff, collapse onto the lab couch without a word, and start drinking. After a while, he’d say, “Are you coming, or what? This is the good vodka,” or, “They still had some fake chocolate left, you want some fake chocolate?”, but as often he’d say nothing and simply wait for Hermann to come down his ladder and join him.

“One drink,” Hermann would say, taking a seat. “Just the one.”

“Sure thing,” Newt would say, pouring him a glass from the bottle he’d been drinking from.

They both knew it never stopped at just the one. They pretended anyway.

They would drink, they would talk; they would cry, sometimes, and hand each other tissues or handkerchiefs they would both pretend to have lost the morning after. Newt was starting to keep what could only be named a _collection_ in one of his drawers. After a while, they would fall asleep, drunk and sad, but not bitter; for the world might have lost heroes, but they still had each other.

It was when they woke up that, sometimes, the magic happened.

———

Hermann woke to a pulsating pain in his hip, a crick in his neck and Newton humming along to Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. He licked his lips and found that the inside of his mouth tasted of a particularly mouldy mango, with the texture to boot. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to open his eyes. He shifted, looking for warmth, and the pain in his hip flared; with a groan he settled on the other, colder, firmer side.

“You at the ‘I hate myself and I want to die?’ stage yet?” Newt’s voice was low and dry. A hand squeezed his shoulder.

“I am at the ‘I dearly wish you did not speak so loud’ phase,” Hermann answered, forcing himself to swallow. “Ah… What time is it?”

“I dunno. Didn’t check. Not morning yet. Don’t think you’ve slept that much. Don’t think I slept at all.”

Hermann nodded and belatedly deemed it a terrible idea. But along with gradual awakeness came the feeling that this wasn’t so bad. That it could have been, in fact, much worse. He shifted again, more cautiously, towards the warmth and softness of Newt’s body, resting his head against his shoulder.

“Hi, old man,” Newt said, gently headbutting him. There was a smile in his voice. “Hair of the dog?”

“Mmh. Just a drop.”

The taste was so awful Hermann felt compelled to open his eyes, if only to check that Newt wasn’t sitting there with a grin on his face, all but ready to make finger guns at him.

“What on earth is this supposed to be?”

“Dunno, the bottle was labelled in Korean.”

“There hasn’t been a Korean team in this Shatterdome for _years_.”

“My point exactly.”

Hermann handed the glass to Newt and settled back down against his shoulder. “Your attempt at poisoning me, foiled again,” he mumbled, breathing in the sweat, the laundry detergent, the strong, lingering smell of kaiju guts. Disgusting. He nuzzled in a little closer.

Newt made a noise of acknowledgement and gulped down the rest of the glass with a sigh. “I guess we lived together and we’ll die together and we won’t get to be poisoned tonight together, then.”

“That… didn’t make any sense,” Hermann said after a while. 

“

The thud of the glass being put down on the floor.

Newt’s arm, stretching over the top of the couch along Hermann’s shoulders.

The after-taste of the Korean liquor, strong and sweet, but not overbearingly so.

The good ol’ cold of pain, the good ol’ warmth of Newton at his side.

Something like silence, something like familiarity. Something like peace.

Silence. Peace. Quiet.

Ah, yes.

He’d been meaning to ask.

“Newton, if I may—”

“Hey, dude, why—”

“Oh.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry, go ahead.”

“No, it’s quite alright.”

“Herms, come on.”

A sigh. “Why… Would you… I—Ah, if you would ever want to play the piano, that old thing we have here in the lab. She’s all yours. Not, not now, of course, but—anytime we are not working.”

A beat. Newton’s fingers gently closed around the curve of Hermann’s shoulder. Not digging, not kneading, just there. Resting.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Kay. Same goes for the violin, then. It’d be cool to hear you play.”

“I thought you hated the violin. You once deemed it, I quote, ‘the navel-gazer of musical instruments’.”

“I never said that!”

“You did.”

“Did not.”

“Did.”

“No way.”

“In truth, you did.” Hermann smiled and rested a little more heavily on Newt’s shoulder. “It would be nice, playing music… When all of this is over, perhaps we should.”

He still hadn’t opened his eyes, and he didn’t think he would open them again until morning light. There was such a sweetness in keeping himself in the dark, and not only because it brought him relief on the verge of a massive hangover. It helped maintain the illusion of normalcy, the little white lie that this was their normal relationship.

“Yeah,” Newt whispered after a long while, as Hermann slowly dropped off into sleep again. “When the war is over. Perhaps we should.”

———

They woke up hungover and exhausted, as if they hadn’t slept at all. They bickered their way to their quarters. They leaned against doorsteps and pointed accusatory fingers at each other until exhaustion and bodily functions eventually forced them back into their own rooms—and life was ready to carry on as usual in the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

———

How does one get used to peace, when war feels like all one has ever known?

How does one accept the idea of a present, when one has fought the past ten years for the mere hope of a future?

How does one find one’s sense of self, when one has been in another’s head, when one has caught a glimpse of pure blue-tainted madness?

Well, one might start by cleaning one’s room, or one might be absolutely terrified to clean one’s room and would rather start by cleaning the lab instead.

Where one might find— dusty, sticky, forgotten in a corner— a bottle of saiju and, hazed and blurred in a drunken fog, the memory of almost a promise.

———

“How up to date are you on your Tchaikovsky?” Hermann asks, and Newt has to force himself not to stop and make a face.

“What do you mean, up to date? Has he released a new EP since 1893?” He chuckles, but then he sees the violin case on the desk and the gleam in Hermann's eyes.

“Hush,” Hermann scolds, with a lot of fondness. “To the keyboard, Newton.”

Newt doesn't need to be told twice, the pile of books he was sorting already forgotten. The ghost-Drift almost carries him to the stool, the sheer happiness radiating from Hermann, the giddy anticipation of the enjoyment to come, the pleasure that is already erupting even at the mere idea of it. He trails an eager finger along the edge of the keys; it feels like getting ready to Drift together all over again, this time sans third connection to a murderous alien hivemind.

Newt breathes in. Hermann starts playing. Newt exhales and presses the first note—

It’s a disaster.

It’s a catastrophe.

Behind them stand years of passionate letters, more than a decade of living and working in close quarters _and_ a successful, if not impromptu, Drift. Yet none of this can save them from the awkward, cacophonous, awful—absolutely awful—mess that is trying to play Valse Sentimentale. Not when the violinist lives by the score and the pianist plays by ear from a vague memory of what he thinks the piece should sound like.

“Newton, tempo!”

“What do you mean, tempo? Not my fault if you can’t keep up—”

“No, I can’t keep up, not when you are clearly not playing the proper part!”

“I am playing the proper part!”

“You are not, what you are playing is nonsense.”

A week ago, Newt would have slammed the piano shut and left in a huff. He would have regretted it almost on the spot—especially slamming the piano shut—but through the last tendrils of the Drift he can feel Hermann’s disappointment, as bitter as if it were his own. Beneath the frustration, there’s sadness, there’s loneliness, and Newt won’t stand for any of this. Not here, not today.

“Okay, okay— okay, what about Vivaldi’s Winter?” he suggests with a snap of his fingers.

“There is no piano in Vivaldi’s Winter,” Hermann answers, gently putting the violin back in his case. “Never you mind, this was—”

“No, come on, this was a good idea. We, we just need to, uh. Rehearse. You know. Like other people do.”

“Am I supposed to be glad you didn’t say ‘normal’?” Hermann’s tone could cut through stone, but he can’t fool Newt anymore, not when Newt can feel the stir of emotions beneath the chalk dust and the frown.

“Whatever. Okay, take it from the top. I’ll follow your lead.”

“You… what?”

“I’ll fo— don’t make me say it again just because you wanna hear it! Just start playing.”

———

‘Valse Sentimentale’ was composed by one Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—one very homosexual, very mentally ill Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—as the last movement of his Op. 51, in 1881. It is a lovely piece, short but full of feelings, tender and bittersweet. One might be tempted, at first, to believe it is the violin’s time to shine, as the piano part is somewhat tamer, but one would be very wrong. It truly is a valse: a dance, a dialogue. Relentlessly, they pursue each other, two steps back, one step forward; one with panache, the other with quieter determination, circling each other until they eventually align, until they eventually meet.

Written by a man who found warm softness in a life of tumult and depression; played by two men who had no time for tenderness in the middle of war, grief and destruction— the music soars.

Two minutes had never before lasted so long.

And when they put the violin down, when they rest their fingers on the keyboard and the last note fades between the concrete walls of the lab— the music plays on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! This was written for [Laurenftagn](https://laurenftagnart.tumblr.com/)'s birthday, with a thousand apologies for the lateness. This was inspired by a chat we had, dude, so I really hope you'll like it!! 
> 
> Betareading was by [Stunnerstorm](https://stunnerstorm.tumblr.com/), all remaining typos and mistakes are my own! 
> 
> Let me know what you thought in the comments, or get in touch with me on [tumblr](http://seaweedredandbrown.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/overlaured)~


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